Over and Over Again
by southernbookgirl
Summary: These are imagined moments of Toby and Happy's relationship inspired by Nathan Sykes' song "Over and Over Again". This is to be completed over several installments. Rated "T" for some angst.
1. First Memories

_Author's Note: So I was listening to Nathan Sykes' song "Over and Over Again" (feat. Ariana Grande) and watching the song's music video when inspiration struck. I could picture Happy and Toby in the song lyrics. I have seen other writers pen stories based on song lyrics, so I thought I would give it a shot. I do not own this song, the show's characters, or the supplementary quotes. This is the first piece of several installments in which I will write a bit about Happy or Toby based upon the song's lyrics. Hopefully I'll be able to get the second set up in the next few days. Please pardon any grammar errors; I will be editing those in the next couple of days when I have more time. You are welcome to read and either PM me or leave a review with your thoughts about this. Happy reading! Bonne nuit à toi!_

 _From the way you smile_ _  
_ _To the way you look_ _  
_ _You capture me_ _  
_ _Unlike no other_ _  
_ _From the first hello_ _  
_ _Yeah, that's all it took_ _  
_ _And certainly_ _  
_ _We had each other_

Happy could remember the first time she met the Doc. She's been working on some project for her latest motorcycle restoration. She'd had her earbuds in, Linkin Park on full blast, when she felt a tap on her shoulder. Whipping her blowtorch mask off, ticked that she'd been disturbed, she was ready to let go a string of expletives when she realized it was Sly who'd gotten her attention. He pointed to Scorpion's newest member, a genius psychiatrist by the name of Tobias M. Curtis. Instead of going to introduce herself, she stood there, taking in this man called Toby: his tall, lanky frame; his dark brown jacket and boots; and the casual way he stood while talking to Walt and Sly, a khaki messenger bag slung across his body. But, the two features that really captured the mechanic's attention were the hat and his smile.

Toby's hat, reminiscent of a style from days gone by, was perched atop his head. It gave him an air of intelligence mixed with a bit of self-assertiveness. But, what really drew Happy to the genius doctor was his smile. It was one of humor, of self-deprecation, of finding fun in every situation. Behind that smile lay hidden an introspective intelligence; painful childhood memories; moments of fun and awkwardness; laughter, tears, and pain. His smile was unlike anything Happy'd ever seen. It captivated her so that it took her a moment to realize that Toby had caught her staring. Walt and Sly had gone back to their separate corners; Happy was grateful neither person (nor a thankfully-absent-for-the-day Collins) witnessed her apparent interest in the newest team member. Toby raised his eyebrows, a smirk replacing his easygoing smile, as if to say, "You see something you like?" To cover for her embarrassment, Happy shot him an icy, death glare in response before slamming her blowtorch helmet back over her face. Toby moved onto other things after a moment, but Happy went through the motions of her work. Her thoughts were still stuck on her newest colleague – his curly hair, his cocky self-confidence, his easygoing smile. She had an inkling he would become someone important to her, to the team, but she never realized how far she would go and how hard she would fall in the end for this genius from New York State.

 _And I won't leave you_ _  
_ _Always be true_ _  
_ _One plus one, two for life_ _  
_ _Over and over again_

"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake... they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you." ~Elizabeth Gilbert, _Eat, Pray, Love_

 _From the heat of night_ _  
_ _To the break of day_ _  
_ _I'll keep you safe_ _  
_ _And hold you forever_ _  
_ _And the sparks will fly_ _  
_ _They will never fade_ _  
_ _'Cause every day just gets better and better_

Toby couldn't pinpoint the exact moment he started falling for Happy Quinn, the mechanical prodigy, but he could remember a distinct moment when he knew he felt something for her. Happy rarely showed emotion, but when she did, it revealed parts of her soul that she had kept buried and hidden for years, for one reason or another. This particular day, about a year after Mark Collins' departure from the team, a private company had hired Scorpion to assist in the location of a missing set of siblings.

These children – a boy and two girls, ages two, six, and seven – had been kidnapped in the middle of the night from their foster home. The foster parents, desperate to locate their little ones, had hired this company and Scorpion to help. The fear was the children had been kidnapped by their deranged birth father, a monster who had broken out of prison where he was serving a life-sentence for the murder of their mother and baby brother. Though Scorpion and the other individuals involved did their best, in the end, it wasn't enough. The precious children had been found beaten to death, their mutilated bodies thrown into a shallow canyon north of Los Angeles. Their father had been captured not far from the crime scene. He did not seem remorseful in the slightest; in fact, he seemed thrilled with the horrendous acts he had committed, believing them to be some sort of sick challenge he had confronted and won.

After Scorpion wrapped up things on their end and returned to the garage, Happy retreated to the garage rooftop. Walt drove Sly home, but Toby stayed around for a bit. He'd planned to go to a casino near his apartment, release his frustration and anger in a late-night round at the card table. However, something compelled him to go up and check on Happy. What he saw left him speechless. The petite mechanic was curled up on a bench in the rooftop's corner, her knees drawn in tightly to her chest. Her head was tucked in between her chest and knees, and Toby swore that – over the sound of late night L.A. traffic on this humid August night – he could hear sniffling. From what Toby knew, Happy had had a rough time in foster care. But though they were best friends, Happy did not open up to the psychiatrist often. At the moment, all Toby wanted to go to Happy, wrap her up in a hug, and just hold her while she cried. This protective instinct he felt toward the mechanic, Toby realized, was neither surprising nor unexpected. He deliberated for a moment and decided it was best to let her cry through it, giving her the space he thought she needed. However, as he turned to leave, Happy looked up. He expected a violent reaction, angry accusations of him invading her space and to leave her alone. However, she never said a word; the haunting, sorrowful look on her face and the glossy sheen of tears in her eyes drew him to her. Toby sat down and opened his arms to her. She fell into his embrace, her silent tears leaving a dark stain on his grey tee. He held her close to his heart as she cried; he was afraid she could feel his heart beating faster the longer she was in his arms.

After a time, her breathing slowed, and Happy fell into an exhausted sleep. All the while, Toby held her, never letting her go. He knew that she was his best friend, and he was hers. Yes, he had his fiancée Amy, but something about his relationship with Happy was different. Even though he was a brilliant psychiatrist, he didn't know how to deal with this flurry of emotions he was feeling. But one thing he was sure of, the emotions he felt, the thoughts running through his brain as he held Happy, were ones he would never forget. In the midst of his pain and anguish, that memory only grew stronger…and so did the clarity of his feelings for his best friend.

 _And I won't leave you_ _  
_ _Always be true_ _  
_ _One plus one, two for life_ _  
_ _Over and over again_

"I actually fell for you before I even realized I did." ~Unknown


	2. The Call of the Heart

_Author's Note: This is my take on what happened between the team cleaning up the garage and the Toby/Happy scene at the end of "Fractured" (2x16). Thanks to Flavato Forever and Anonwrite for their proofreading assistance and feedback! I really appreciate it. :-)_

 _So don't ever think I need more  
_ _I've got the one to live for  
No one else will do  
I'm telling you  
Just put your heart in my hands  
I promise it won't get broken_

"To love someone with all of your heart requires reaching them where they are with the only words they can understand." ~Shannon L. Alder

Toby never thought that Happy would ever reciprocate his feelings. But, thanks to some miracle instrumented by the gods, it actually happened. It was after the L.A. earthquake, when emotions were still running on the intense high from earlier, when it finally happened. Happy had left the garage before him; he heard her rev up her bike and drive away not two minutes after her departure. He assumed she was tired from the events of the day and drained from the hours-long adrenaline rush, so he wouldn't see her until work the next day. The fact that she didn't say goodbye bugged him – he thought they were growing closer. He looked towards the door she had walked through less than five minutes ago, puzzled, but then put it out of his mind as he finished up his part of the cleaning before leaving for the night.

It was about an hour and a half after Happy left that he parked his car and walked up to his apartment. He was pulling his key out to unlock his door when he ran into another person walking in the opposite direction. The psychiatrist glanced up to apologize but what – or rather, who – he saw had stopped him dead in his tracks.

"Happy, what are you doing here? Are you okay? Is something wrong?" Toby started babbling, shocked but happy to see his colleague.

Happy looked around nervously and shifted on her feet. "Um, well, yeah…it's nothing. Just wanted to check on you, make sure you were okay after the quake. Okay, goodbye." Happy tried to dash off down the stairs, but Toby caught her arm before she could make a clean getaway.

"Hap, wait," Toby said, knowing more was going on that she wasn't saying.

Happy, though she was a good eight inches shorter than the doctor, shot him a death glare that would have caused most to whither. However, Toby had become immune to moments such as these, and he kept a level gaze on the mechanical engineer for a few more moments.

Eventually, she lowered her eyes, let out a deep, exhausted sigh, and mumbled something to herself. Toby couldn't catch all of it, but he could have sworn she said something along the lines of "can't do this anymore."

' _What can't she do anymore?_ ' the psychiatrist wondered. Curious about this, he unlocked his door and gently guided Happy to his sofa, closing the door behind them before taking a seat opposite the mechanic.

He waited quietly, but a few minutes passed without Happy speaking. Finally, Toby broke the silence.

"You said you couldn't do this anymore? What is 'this' exactly?" the psychiatrist gently prodded.

Happy looked at him almost angrily, but Toby could see she was wringing her hands with worry.

"We've known each other for a while," her words came out as a whisper.

' _Wow, something really must be bothering her,_ ' Toby thought. Happy was never this quiet about something unless it was really disturbing or unsettling to her.

"And we got – I mean, we were – well, it's kind of like…"

A part of Toby wanted to laugh, watching Happy string together phrase after meaningless phrase in an attempt to get her point across, but he knew that that wouldn't solve anything for either one of them.

"Maybe I shouldn't have come," she concluded, but didn't move. "It's just…"

She looked at Toby hopefully, as if he might say something to rescue her from the awkwardness of her inability to express her feelings, but he stayed quiet. She sighed.

"Forget it," she muttered. And without any sort of warning, she leaned across the sofa to press her lips to his, giving him the most passionate and frustration-filled kiss Toby had ever had. The vexation and tension of the situation only fueled the fire, and soon Toby was responding, his arms wrapped firmly around her waist, pulling her on his lap. At some point, Toby's hat had been knocked off his head, and Happy was grabbing onto Toby's curls in an effort to release her exasperation whilst pulling him in as close as possible for the kiss.

It was not long after they started kissing that Toby knew that they were about to pass a point of no return. Still holding onto Happy with one hand, Toby pulled away so he could look into Happy's eyes. For a moment, there was a look of hurt and confusion as to why Toby did what he did. He quickly responded to the unspoken question to assuage her fears.

"Happy, Hap," he began and kissed her lightly again, "Are you sure you want to do this? I know you prefer action over anything," Toby smiled wryly at this comment, and he could have sworn that a faint blush appeared on Happy's cheeks. "However, I don't want to force you to do anything you don't want to do or are not comfortable with." He tilted his head slightly to the right as he read her facial expressions, looking at her eyes, to gauge her response.

After a moment, the mechanical engineer looked him straight in the eye, and without any hesitation, she said, "I want this. You are the one I want, the only one."

Toby leaned down to kiss her as Happy closed her eyes and tilted her head up to press her lips to his own. It was in that moment, as Toby held her in his arms, that Happy knew she could give her heart away. In Toby, she had found not only a lover and a best friend, but an intellectual equal and partner in life.

Growing up, she had let herself trust few people, and every time she was let down in one way or another. In her late teens, after she'd left high school and before she met Walter and joined Scorpion, she had given herself to someone who she thought would show her the love and care she had secretly craved for during those lonely years in foster care. Instead, the guy who Happy thought loved her only used her. Her abilities were unrivaled, and he used them advantageously in his line of business. Then, as the relationship continued, he grew jealous of the looks and comments Happy would get about her body; he tried to show Happy that she belonged to no one else but him. After weeks of fighting off his advances, she beat him in retaliation after he tried to take advantage of her in a drunken rage. Before dawn the next morning, Happy had packed up her stuff and fled. She left him, her foster care years, and her old life behind her; when she met Walter, he offered her a fresh start. And then, when she met Toby several years later, she found in him a kindred spirit of sorts, one who understood the pain of absent parental love, abuse, and abandonment in their adolescent years.

As she and Toby grew closer – first as colleagues, then as best friends, and now as a potential couple – Happy was afraid of opening up and allowing herself to be vulnerable. Her past experiences showed that only brought pain and suffering. But, in the year since Toby had slept through their date, the mechanic came to this realization: life is full of pain and heartache, but those feelings will be multiplied if you deny yourself what you want and love the most. And that night, as she looked into Toby's eyes, she realized he was it. All those years of searching for love and security, she found in this sarcastic but kindhearted psychiatrist from New York. She was treasured for who she was, and in spite of everything life might throw at them, her heart would be safe in his hands. And for Happy, that was something she never knew she wanted until she had it, and it was a feeling she never wanted to relinquish.

"I have not always chosen the safest path. I've made my mistakes, plenty of them. I sometimes jump too soon and fail to appreciate the consequences. But I've learned something important along the way: …to heed the call of my heart… [The] safest path is not always the best path and I've learned that the voice of fear is not always to be trusted." ~Steve Goodier


End file.
